Chains of Victimization (Podcast)
Episode 19: Chains of Victimization.
If you have been a victim of abuse or suffered through an abusive relationship, it is important to acknowledge the abuse, whether it neglect, verbal, emotional, physical, or sexual, was not your fault. It was not your shame. But, now that it’s over, it is your responsibility to regain your power and redefine your sense of self. Don’t allow the abuser to continue hurting you by proxy. For links to the songs mentioned, please visit the original blog post.
Caught in the Cogs 
Thank for your pod cast. I am a 48 year old father of an 8 year old, I am in Australia.
Awesome! Thank you for commenting and letting me know you’re listening.
Do you write about false accusations that have resulted in stigma. In my case children were put up to lie about me, a lie that was thrown out of court as baseless and frivolous. Unfortunately, the children are my sisters grand children, so now my daughter and I are not invited and unwelcome at family gatherings, for example, this is Christmas.
My daughter is 8 and the my dad, the grandfather is choosing to be at my sisters house rather than sharing with my child. As a result, we have no family to share Christmas with, no uncles or aunties for my 8 year old. How do you deal with this kind of victimisation.
Through therapy. It’s how you deal with any kind of victimization. Accepting that it happened and rebuilding your life.
You have your daughter to share Christmas with. That’s not nothing. Many, many people don’t even have that. The only thing you can do is accept the way your family views you, and there is a reason behind it, so look deep, go into therapy, and figure out what that is. What do they see that you don’t?
Do this, if not for yourself, for your daughter.
I haven’t written about false accusations from children, but I have written about false rape accusations and how incredibly rare they are. Often times the claim of “falsely accused” comes from the accused not believing he did anything wrong, but it doesn’t change the fact that he did something that caused deep trauma to another human being. The first step is to accept that, whether you think it was wrong or not.
I have no idea who you are or what you did or did not do, nor do you say what you were accused of, so I’m speaking from personal experience here: My exBF raped me. There wasn’t enough evidence for an arrest, let alone a trial, but it doesn’t change that he raped me. It doesn’t change that I’ve been severely traumatized by the experience and the subsequent treatment by him and my former community. I’m still in therapy nearly a year later. My sexuality has been stolen from me. He claims I falsely accused him, too.
My point is, the children said what they said for a reason. You might not see it as damaging, and there is a slight chance they’re lying all together, but even that doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that you accept this. They are not comfortable around you. They don’t feel safe around you.
The next step is to go into therapy and try to discover what it is you did that could’ve caused this reaction and traumatization.
Accept it. You can’t change it. You can look inside yourself and perhaps find some hard-truths there, then work on changing your own behavior.